


Unicorn Tapestry

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Badass Mycroft, Death, Gen, M/M, Mycroft the spy, death kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-27
Updated: 2015-11-27
Packaged: 2018-05-03 15:19:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5296352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ok, I've been busy, and I had planned to catch up on my overdue responses to WONDERFUL feedback, and instead a story came and descended upon me. (Hangs head) I am not sure you would not prefer I answer your welcome, beloved posts, but tonight I opted for writing you this odd story instead. All the different forms of mystrade....</p><p>This one is about Lestrade being able to want Mycroft--need Mcroft--perhaps love Mycroft, for the very traits that one suspects most people would find most repelent and alien--the parts that make him a top British operative, even if he does hate doing leg-work these days.  There is violence. There is killing. There is no remorse.  Be warned that this story is not uncomfortable with that, though the story's writer is, at least a bit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unicorn Tapestry

“You don’t know him,” Sherlock said, drawling into a lazy smoke ring. He was sprawled lazily in his chair at the Baker Street apartment, legs long, ankles crossed, bum half falling off the chair seat. The fire crackled in the fireplace.

Lestrade, nursing a glass of scotch and one of the fat, sexy Cuban blunts he’d been given by his team earlier that day, grunted, but didn’t say anything. Instead he sucked lovingly at the chubby cigar. It was beautiful, he thought—the smoke rich and dense, almost chewy. He let the mouthful go, and slit his eyes open just enough to watch the cloud float up to the ceiling, where it joined the haze of hours past.

“He’s not what you think,” Sherlock said, noting the glitter of awareness.

Lestrade grunted again. He had no desire to get into a discussion of Mycroft with Sherlock. It was like discussing a cobra with a mongoose—the vibe just was not going to match the good scotch and the beautiful blunt. Instead he pulled his legs up into the hollow of John’s armchair, twisting himself into a knotted ball, too tiddly and tired to think about what the posture demonstrated…a fit body, lean legs still limber enough to fold up into the narrow space, a round bum, a slim, fit waist, and most of all a sensual persona that could settle into languorous relaxation. Lestrade had aged well. He seldom chose to think about it, though he was not one to ignore it, either. He’d learned young that he was beautiful. He’d learned almost as soon how little that was worth, compared to a million other traits and attributes. It was something he never forgot, but never really believed in—beauty let you down. Brains? Not quite so much.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?”

Lestrade closed his eyes again, shaking his head. He sucked at the blunt. He had a filthy mind, he thought, feeling the fat cylinder between his lips.

He shivered, as his mind flashed him images. Mycroft would be fatter, heavier, the skin of his cock chamois-fine and tender. He’d smell of sweat and soap and semen.

“He’s killed men.”

“I know.” The words slipped out against Lestrade’s will.

“Do you?”

He did. He’d seen it. Today. He didn’t think Sherlock knew…not even that it had happened, much less that Lestrade had witnessed it.

It had been a hell of a day, he thought. A hell of a day. He’d earned the box of blunts Sally had handed him before they left the Yard for the night. “From all of us,” she’d said, with a cheeky grin. “’Cause you coulda been dead, and we’re glad you’re not.”

He’d accepted with as cheeky a grin in return. He’d rolled the fat, sweet thing between his fingers, and already the fantasy of Mycroft had been alive in him. The well-tended tobacco of the wrap was humid, like flesh, the inner shreds of tobacco springy. It had felt alive between his fingers.

He could have been dead. He wasn’t.

They’d been working as a team—all of them—though Sally and the rest of the Yarders didn’t know all the roles Lestrade played in the complicated dance of agencies. Well, hell—they didn’t know half what Sherlock got up to. Or John. And they hadn’t a clue what Mycroft was. The damned man had been having such bloody fun poncing around being a finicky little bureaucratic twat. He’d sniffed that long nose and rolled his eyes and been so classically a total twit in bespoke that no one on the team had even thought to ask what all the other silent, subtle people who came and went were up to. No—not with Holmes holding their attention, irritating them to chittering madness, providing the classic, perfect, oft’ asked for “distraction” that allowed his people infinite latitude to do what they had to unobserved.

One tall, slim man in bespoke, holding the eyes of trained coppers, of other agents, of palace staff, of the Queen’s own security…a prancing fool, darting here, dashing there, clucking, prodding things with that feckin’ brolly of his. He’d even done the “glove test,” only with a white, crisp, clean cotton handkerchief.

It had raised the hair on Lestrade’s nape, it had, because he knew what the yarders and the palace staff, and even a number of the agencies had not—that hidden amongst them was a killer, with a gun. Waiting…planning. Hungry in a way that ensured the day would end in blood. The only real question was whether it would also end with a grieving nation.

People forgot what royalty was about. It was not essentially different from what Mycroft did that afternoon. In the end, Royalty held the eye riveted, and waited for the gunmen to arrive. They provided cover for an entire nation, and did so in a million unsung ways. That afternoon Mycroft repaid the favor.

The Queen was to review the troops again. And Prince Philip—he’d be there, that grand old man, though his health was no longer what it might have been. And Prince William and Kate…and the little Prince...

Lestrade knew what the team didn’t—that the killer was bugfuck crazy as Moriarty had been, and twice as good at being where you didn’t want him, when you didn’t want him there. He knew that MI5 had been trying to lure him from the shadows for years, now. He knew that the man was fixated on the Royals, convinced he was the true Heir to Bonny Prince Charlie the Stewart. That his loyalties were a crazy patchwork of Scottish nationalism, socialism, and conviction that he would take back “his” throne. He knew the man called himself “Strider,” after Aragorn from the Lord of the Rings. That he was a serial killer. That Her Majesty had approved the day's event, and helped choose the doubles who would stand in for the younger Royals…

That she herself was accepting no ringer, for fear Strider would realize he’d  been gulled. That Prince Philip would stand beside her.

Mycroft spun and strutted and put on his show, while Sherlock strode through the palace arcades and John settled in behind the crenellations on the roof, overlooking the parade grounds, his now-legal little Sig Sauer ready. That his sly wife held another point, belly on the roof-tiles, a sniper’s rifle in its mount, ready to be used.

Lestrade knew what too few of the rest of the team knew, or understood—that no one planned to take Strider captive. Oh, they would if the chance turned up, but the plan, the simple, cold, pragmatic plan was to kill the bastard stone-cold dead if that chance came first. Because in ten years he’d killed at least five surrogates who’d doubled in his crazy mind as Royals. Because he’d strike, and strike, and keep striking until the family was dead—or he was. Because sometimes the answer really is “needs killing.”

He’d taken his own watch spot an hour before the review was to begin. It was minor. He was wearing the uniform of the regular force—the black suit, the neat cap with the checkered band, the badges of honor pulled out for once in his life and pinned on his chest—a swag he’d never really thought about before, not until it hung heavy over both pectorals, like armor, hinting at the stab-vest hidden beneath his shirt—out of sight.

He was carrying.

It felt odd. Wrong. He’d never carried in all the days he’d worn that uniform, the days before he was made a DC, then a DS, then DI, and now, long years after he’d started, DCI. He’d walked the streets in the eighties, when the IRA was still the top terror organization in London, and he’d never carried more than his baton. Now he had a Walther tucked up in the small of his back, and a second in a shoulder holster.

He stood at attention, just one more layer of security in a space filled with security. He was invisible, because he was so visible—it was Mycroft who stood out like a dancer in the follow-spot, holding the eye, riveting attention.

Sherlock crossed the open space of the reviewing ground. Somewhere up on the roofline Lestrade saw a flicker of movement. He murmured the observation into the carefully hidden mic, knowing it would reach who knew how many other operatives. Soon he saw another flicker of motion—the agent sent to check his report.

The show was about to begin, he thought. The spectators had arrived—there was a mob outside the iron fence around the open parade ground. Cameras clicked. A more official group of newsies had set up with their video cameras, an anchor person muttering into a mic of obscene size and proportion.

The Royals were queuing up to do their bit just inside the two oak doors leading out from the portico. At the far side of the parade ground two doors swung wide, and a single rider came out, one hand clutching a banner. Behind him came another, this one holding a little silver cornet. The two riders drew their horses to a stop, and the cornet player raised his instrument, blowing something Lestrade was sure was of great symbolic importance. He hadn’t a clue what it was—but tradition, yeah? It had to mean something…

The doors on this end opened. Lestrade, slipping deeper in the shade of his niche in the angles of the building, watched Mycroft scurry—no, scuttle—up to their Majesties and usher them out, hovering somehow always to one side or the other as they processed out into the open yard and arrayed themselves in a line, Her Majesty and Prince Philip front and center.

Then the two riders were in motion again. They were followed by a drum horse, a round and solid piebald, his black and white patches gleaming in the sun, two kettle drums to either side of his saddle swathed in velvet and braid, and his drummer riding without reins as he pounded the cadence of the parade drill.

Lestrade was impressed, in a bland, distracted way. He was sure it was all very nice, but he himself was watching the crowd, watching the trees, watching the rooflines. Watching Mycroft hold the eye of anyone who was not watching the Royal pomp and circumstance.

He allowed himself to drift to his left, and once around the corner began a slow perambulation of the yard hidden by the turn of the building. He was sure there were a dozen other people checking the same space, directly, or though field glasses, or through CCTV cameras—but that was their business. His was to perambulate and take his own time looking, observing, keeping watch.

There was a bevy of children in school unis hustling along a walkway, late for the main event. Behind them nipped a little Border Collie of a woman who had to be their teacher, and another teacher, too, dressed in teacher-y clothing and keeping back a yard or so, presumably the better to angle off if any straggler went slopping off to explore on his own. Lestrade watched, hands folded behind his back, looking official but bored. Not that he was bored. It was hard to be bored knowing a serial killer madman anarchist was like as not to turn up any minute now. Harder, with the straps of his shoulder holster cutting close and snugging the stab vest too tightly against his chest, and the Walther in the small of his back rubbing his wrists sore where they folded across the holster.

He licked his lips. Scanned the roofline. Watched the milling crowd outside the fence. Glanced one last time at the Border Collie and her herd of student sheep and goats…

The backup herd dog was gone. The man Lestrade had thought was there to chase after strays…

He leaned over his mic.

“Everyone—look sharp near the south yard---see if you spot a man, dressed in tweeds, cap low over his eyes. He’s gone missing from the group he came with. About six foot, eleven stone. Athletic.

This, he thought, was it…

He moved again, heading at an angle the only way he could imagine the other man going—not toward the parade ground, but toward a lesser door into the main building. He thought he might remember the sound of a door closing—maybe. He reported his direction to his team, then headed inside.

The halls were long and empty. It quickly became obvious that this was part of the network of the palace that served the staff, not the Royals themselves. The rooms were clean, neat, orderly, and businesslike, with nowhere near the level of decoration seen in the public rooms or in the living quarters.  There were offices to either side of a long run of hallway. Lestrade felt sweat break out—the man could be anywhere. He drew the Walther from his shoulder holster, leaving the one in the small of his back as his ace in the hole. He moved out, then, with the slow stalk of a trained hunter. He left no office unchecked.

They were little rooms—private little offices for people with one or another of the million little jobs that kept the lifeblood of the House of Winsdor flowing.

Lestrade didn’t care so much for the Royals as he might—or he hadn’t until he joined MI5 and began to understand what the Monarchy still did for the nation. A combined crew of showmen, diplomats, celebrity starlets, and, underneath, a resource forever at the service of the nation, the House of Windsor served. It provided cover for spies, for officers, for diplomats. Members gave their own lives to the meat-grinder of a life half glitter and all politics…and they did it with aplomb.

“They’re filthy rich,” said the voice of his Labor ancestors.

“They earn it,” said his inner espionage agent.

“Bugger that,” said his inner cop. “Shut up, there’s a dick with a plan to commit murder around here somewhere…keep your mind on business.”

Three steps down the hall. Stop. Ease open an office door. Check the room. Step out. Check the room opposite. Step out. Three more steps down the hall. Repeat.

“Any sign of him out there?” he muttered.

“Not seen a hair, gov.” Sally’s voice was chipper and cocky in his earpiece.

He had to be somewhere.

The hallway met another hallway, forming a crossed intersection. He hesitated, surveying the different paths. One led to sunlight—but in the wrong direction from the parade ground. Another showed by the subtle improvement in its carpeting that it was headed for the posh parts of the building. The hall that continued the one he was already in became bleaker, the carpeting giving way to a depressing institutional lino suggesting perhaps kitchens, or laundry rooms…

He turned and headed toward the posh regions. That’s what he’d do if he were a killer, wasn’t it?

There were fewer rooms along this hallway, and they were larger, though still institutional in nature. A room filled with cubicles, suggesting perhaps a secretarial pool? A lunch room with long wood tables and trash bins liked with plastic bags, each bin with a sign suggesting whether it was for garbage, recycles, or paper. A mail room—not a central mailroom, but the sort with cubbies that allowed departments to pick up and leave notes. He began to feel edgy that he’d seen no one but himself. These rooms should have a few people, even if most the staff had gone to find good windows overlooking the parade ground where the house brigade even now rode drill. He could hear the sound of the drums even now, thud-thud, and the rattle of snare drums and the sound of hooves landing on packed earth.

The hall ended with a door. He paused, lowered his gun until it was hidden behind the turn of his hip… then eased the door open…

Fuck. There was a man poised in a tiny window with deep, deep sides.  He turned and smiled, face bland and somewhat equine. “Yes?”

“Just patrolling,” Lestrade said, studying the face. Frowning.

It could be Strider.

It might not be.

“What you lookin’ at?” he asked, mildly, trying to sound curious rather than alert.

“Feckin’ parade drill,” the man answered, turning back to the little window.

“Gotta be better views.”

The man shrugged. He was dressed in brown trousers and a white shirt. No jacket. No cap…

The pants were tweed…but so were the pants of a million men in England on any given day.

“Bet you can find a better spot if you go up a floor,” Lestrade said.

“Yeah, and ‘alf the bloody staff are there,” the man said without turning back. “Bloody women all nattering and talkin’ about the feckin’ Queen’s feckin’ ‘at and whether feckin’ Duchess Kate’s wearin’ feckin' designer dresses…”

A cold little shiver went through Lestrade. There was something in the man’s voice—a loathing, a resentment. It wasn’t hot, it was cold, and loathsome. He felt a certainty in his gut—this was him. This was Strider, come to take back the throne of his ancestors—this was the crazy man.

“I think maybe you’d best come along, sir,” he said, easing forward, sliding into the little room toward the tall man in the little window. Lestrade looked for the weapon—the weapon the man had to have. He couldn’t see anything…until he noticed the curl of the man’s right hand, tight around something.

“Oi,” he said, still quietly, calmly. “Oi, I said you’d best come along now.”

The man turned, and his eyes were ice. “Not till the show’s over.”

“’S over now, for you. Come along wi’ ye.” Lestrade was grateful, had always been grateful for the working class accent that allowed him to sound like any bloke you might meet in a poolroom or a pub. He wished he could contact his team, then remembered they could already hear him. He held back an internal sigh of relief. Someone knew he’d found Strider, then…even if he botched it, the rest of them would be along soon enough.

“Oi, gov, what’s on?” Sally asked.

“We’ve got it, Ms Donovan.”

Mycroft’s voice, at its prim best. Lestrade heard Sally scoff, then grudgingly agree to hold her point with the team.

Mycroft had it. He’d be calling in his team now….Anthea, more deadly than she seemed. The dark serpents who made up Mycroft’s department within a department within an agency, the hidden dagger at the heart of intelligence.

“Come along,” he said to Strider, feeling the confidence of knowing there was backup on the way. He reached out with his free hand to take Strider’s elbow.

The man was fast—too fast, much too fast. A trained fighter, after all. A killer. He spun, his hand still curled like a shell around something. Even so, he fought, striking with the side of his hand and his wrist. Lestrade spun, dropped back, dropped to his knee, hand coming up with the Walther, taking the classic stance with one hand bracing the other, elbows loose to accept the recoil. Shouting—he knew he was shouting something about “drop it, drop it,” even though he had no clue what Strider held.

Then Strider was turning, spinning, his foot lashing out as he leapt and kicked the Walther out of Lestrade’s hands. Lestrade fell backward, a controlled move, rolling as he dropped, already planning to reach for the hidden second automatic when Stider did something elegant and fast and the other foot came up as the first foot landed and he got in a kick that connected with Lestrade’s arse and sent him tumbling. Strider lunged at him, hand still curled, other hand now holding a knife—a big thing with a blade that looked old and hand-forged, like a Gurka kukri or a wide old carbon steel skinning knife from back in the eighteen hundreds—a nasty thing that could gut you in one sweeping slash.

He’d lost the upper hand. Strider wasn’t just crazy—he was skilled, and he went all-in. Lestrade was scrambling too fast to get the gun, and sick with the knowledge he’d telegraphed its existence. Strider wouldn’t let him get at it now…

He was no longer thinking of backup. He was no longer thinking of anything but staying alive another second…another…another. He was on the ground—never good—and couldn’t find his feet—Strider kept ripping at him, the blade coming in again and again, and between strikes he danced murder like Gene Kelly danced jazz….

It was between a kick and a strike that something changed. A shadow fell, a movement flickered. Something….

Lestrade flattened himself to the floor like a pup avoiding trouble. Just in time—black and silver seemed to slide past, and when he looked up there were two dancers, and one had the upper hand.

Mycroft had shed his morning coat somewhere along the path between the parade drill and this little, shabby room in the belly of the palace. His black pants swung as he spun, turned, moved in and dropped back. If Strider was Gene Kelly, Mycroft was Astaire: calm, urbane, just a bit too fey, but, oh-God, those moves… Strider slashed with the knife, a sweep that could have opened Mycroft’s belly. As it was it hooked the white cotton of his shirt, splitting it cleanly, and Mcyroft swore.

“Bugger,” he was huffing—for all his skill not enough of a man of action to do this with perfect ease. He had to work at it, even though he made it look easy.

Lestrade realized belatedly that he had time to draw the automatic now—though given the high-speed dance in the center of the room he didn’t know if he’d get a clean shot. He braced again, his stance lower, his elbow steady against his knee. He followed the fight, turning as the fighters turned, waiting for his shot.

Then…

He never knew how to describe “then” in the years after. The big, wide blade shot at Mycroft. Mycroft turned and pivoted, grasping the man’s wrist. Strider threw himself one way. Mycroft countered with a balance-changing turn. They struggled for the knife, Strider looking for damage points he could inflict, Mycroft looking for control. And then the knife was turned, and Mycroft’s face burned like nuclear fission—something blinding in his face.

Then Strider was down as Sally and the team came tumbling in against Mycroft’s orders.

Mycroft stood in the middle of the room, and for one fleeting second Lestrade could see everything in that still face, those transparent-blue eyes. It was like a view over eternity. He had killed…and taken a cold, professional pleasure in the moment of effective action.  The moment when knife and hand and arm and need and duty and passion had been one, and the broad, heavy blade had come up, and under, and found Strider’s heart.

It was all there to see, for just one second—a kind of glory that had nothing to do with bloodlust or killer’s insanity, but with becoming Death, like Oppenheimer, like Shiva. There had been something clean in killing, in that moment.

And then it was gone, and Mycroft was suddenly, slyly, brilliantly nothing more than a panicked bureaucrat with a bloody knife in his hand squealing that “he fell on it! Oh, God, he fell…”

Which if Sally and her team had been paying half the attention they thought they were would have been obvious bullshit. Mycroft had killed—professionally, cleanly, elegantly, with perfect, flawless intent. Strider was dead, and the job was over.

By the end of the next half-hour the team was sworn to eternal secrecy, “Because my career would be over, please, one of you take credit, please, I’m not…I couldn’t…”

He dithered so nicely, Lestrade thought, leaning against the wall after he’d gathered himself and the first gun and pulled himself together and dusted himself off. Now there was time, and he could watch the performance of perfect useless melodrama played out by a master. Later Sally would laugh over her coffee and allow as how “that brother of Sherlock’s is a right muggins, isn’t he? Squealed like a little girl…”

Lestrade had seen Death, though, and knew better. He didn’t tell Sal.

He also didn’t tell her Death had hit him in the groin, left him hard, stolen something from him in one moment of brilliance. He would never forget that body in motion, the hand wielding the knife, the eyes like windows into infinite ice, the lips of that wide mouth tightening for just a second as the blade sunk in and rose up.

Some people were born killers, hot with it. Others were stone-cold bastards, indifferent. Mycroft Holmes, though, was neither. He was Death performing a ritual duty, no less than Her Majesty standing to watch her cavalrymen drill, no less than the cavalrymen, no less than the sun shining down, no less than the world turning—it was all a ritual of necessary observation. It was all beautiful and empty of malice.

It was sexy as hell.

Mycroft, fussing with his white handkerchief, rubbed away the freckles of blood from across the back of his hand. He raised his glance, and met Lestrade’s, and something bloomed into life between them.

Lestrade fought back his gasp. He nodded, calmly.

Mycroft nodded back.

Lestrade hoped that meant what he thought it meant.

But Mycroft wasn’t there at the end of the aftermath. Nor was he there in his long black car when Lestrade got off work. Nor was he at Sherlock’s, where Lestrade went afterward, half-hoping to find the older brother there.

Sherlock, who did not know what that day had held. Or did he?

“He’s a killer,” he said, still sprawled out in his chair; still sucking on his cigarette. “You have no idea what he can do. I think the Queen keeps him because he’s too dangerous to let go, and too useful to kill outright.”

Lestrade sucked the blunt, imagining those slim, strong hands, imagining the weight of a cock, imagining that still face, innocent of hatred or blood lust—imaging that deadly, pure unicorn lying beneath him, face crumpled as he came to pieces for his lover…

Screw this, he thought. I’m not waiting any longer.

He threw the end of the blunt in the fireplace, tossed the last drops of scotch from his glass into the flames. He rose, uncoiling his body in one smooth, fluid motion. “I’m outta here,” he said, and grinned, ruffling Sherlock’s hair. “See you around.”

Sherlock glowered from the depths of the chair. “You don’t know what you want, Lestrade.”

“That’s all you know… I know my own mind, lad.” He wondered how Sherlock could so reliably sound like he knew everything, even when he was half-faking. “We all did good today, didn’t we?”

Sherlock pouted—he and John and Mary hadn’t been part of the show. Did not, in theory, even know the show was now over. They were out of the loop…

Not that Lestrade believed that Sherlock was ever completely, out of the loop.

“I’m off to home,” he said, and grabbed his overcoat and rattled down the stairs.

Sherlock moved to stand at the window, in the shadow of the drapes. He wasn’t surprised to see the man standing across Baker Street, dressed in a trim charcoal-grey Crombie overcoat. Waiting.

Below, Lestrade loped easily out of the building, looking both ways, already debating taking the tube home or calling a cab. Then he saw Mycroft…

Their eyes met.

Lestrade nodded, chin dropping. There were no words for that silent agreement, no words to describe what they both chose in that white second.  Lestrade trotted across the road. Mycroft turned as he did, and soon they walked, silent, into the park, heading for the trees, for the shadows, for the dark woods waiting.

“He’s a killer,” Shelock whispered, watching them go. But he knew the truth—that his brother was a gift of life to Lestrade—and Lestrade a maiden for the unicorn warrior, who would rest his head in his lover’s lap that night and forever more…

The violin rose. The men disappeared in shadow…and the sweet, perfect violence began, in the shadows and the wood and the night.


End file.
